GREAT BRITAIN: The Queen's Husband

The Nazi Ha-Ha. But the school that stamps an Englishman for life is not
his ''preparatory" school but his "public" school. Philip's was
Gordonstoun, a school as young and experimental as Cheam is old and
tradition-encrusted. Its founder, a strong-minded German schoolmaster
named Kurt Hahn, believed that education should provide "the moral
equivalent of war" by facing boys with plenty of hard work, physical
danger and a rugged regimen. Philip, whose four sisters had all married
German princes, was originally entered at a similar school Hahn had
founded in Germany, but his tendency to roar with uncontrollable
laughter whenever he saw the Nazi salute soon decided the family to
send him back to England posthaste. "We thought it better for him as
well as for us if he left Germany," one of Philip's sisters explained
nervously.

At Gordonstoun, Philip reveled in a rigorous routine that included' two
icy showers each day, a long, bracing hike before breakfast, hours
spent in the company of dour but expert Scots fishermen and
boatbuilders. He became captain of the cricket and hockey teams, and
"head boy" of the school in his final year. He was "often naughty,
never nasty," pitched in at dirty jobs like anyone else (on one school
cruise when everybody else was seasick, he did all the cooking and
dishwashing). He early proved he could do most things with less effort
than other boys, sometimes showed impatience and intolerance for those
less gifted. In a letter of recommendation when Philip decided to enter
the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth, stern Dr. Hahn wrote: "Prince
Philip is a born leader, but he will need the exacting demands of a
great service to do justice to himself. His best is outstanding; his
second best is not good enough."

A Gawky Girl. The Royal Navy does not take kindly to pampered
princelings. Tough instructors at Dartmouth went out of their way to
prove the validity of Captain Bligh's legendary dictum that "a
midshipman is the lowest form of life in the British Navy." But Phil
the Greek (as he was sometimes called) weathered every storm. In two
terms he received only one day's punishment, and might well have
avoided a second rude admonition had it not been for a young lady who
came to call.

The young lady, a gawky girl of 13, was a distant cousin whose father
had recently become King Emperor. A devastatingly handsome young man
of 17, Philip could not be expected to show any great interest in her
as a woman, but he could scarcely duck entertaining her. As an officer
and a gentleman, he did his best to please by leaping lithely over a
tennis net ("How good he is. Crawfie. How high he can jump!" cried
Lilibet to her governess), and spicing the conversation on the royal
yacht with salty though not too saltyanecdotes. Elizabeth was
entranced, but if Philip remembered anything special about the visit,
it concerned the following morning when, back on duty and too' sleepy
to hop to at first call, he hit the deck with a resounding whack as a
touchy petty officer slashed the cords on his hammock.